how cos icant get it to learn a thing as i cant read the manual and it dosei pick up new words from text like VV

In view of the urgency of your situation, Bruce's suggestion might appear to be the best. The advantage that you have is that you can import your existing speech files into VV 10, and you're up and running straight away.

It should not be beyond the laptop Vendor's ability to replace Vista with XP in approximately half an hour. I had this done Consequently I can use both VV 10.5 (for which some of my speech files go back to 2001!) and DNS 9.5 (I will be on 10 after the bugs are sorted out).
Quentin

FYI, Virtual PC doesn't support USB at present, whereas VMWare does. The drawback is that VMWare costs $$ whereas Virtual PC does not.

However, if you download the VMWare demo and setup a Virtual OS with it, you can then download the Virtual Player which is a free tool of VMWare to use that Virtual partition.

Just thought I'd let you know in case you didn't

I found it to be far more solid and stable, and with a more mature support structure than Virtual PC.

Or wrong, depending on how you spell Iliopsoas

Mark

Did you get as far as allowing the installation to finish, and by pasting the existing user files into the user folder, allowing immediate start up using that user, opening the " Work with Navigation Macros", and manually importing the macros from the installation disc?
Quentin

OK, one hopefully final sequence of questions re: the VM workstation/player segue:

Do you just create the virtual machine on workstation and have faith that player will find it on installation? How does that work?

Also: What if you later decide the virtual machine you've set up isn't optimal? Are you stuck with what you've got, or can you modify it without buying the whole package? Also, are there any tips on how you should optimize it for a particular application(s)?

Thanks,
Bruce

Okay, I'm gonna try and give it my best here at the risk of sounding like a sales person, which I am NOT, by the way. I'm just hoping to clarify.

If I recall correctly, upon first use, it will ask you where your Virtual Environment is. This is generally in your 'My Documents\VMWare', or something similar, or where ever you may have moved or saved it to (other than the default locaion)

You've got 30 days to play around with it. Or you can always reformat your existing OS to refresh the registry, or you can wait until the next reslease to try a newer version of the trial (I know, not everyone wants to do any of that, but they are viable options) And let's not forget the actual server version that VMWare offers for free if you get really desperate and want to avoid the other extreme options.

Other than that, it comes with some good suggestions on what to use. My basic rule of thumb is to take a look at what the operating system you want to virtualize uses/used for HD space and RAM. From this option, choose the more stable and permant (fixed) size for the Virtual HD and adjust the amount of RAM to allocate after you're done.

For XP with SP3, I found 30G of HD space and 1G of RAM to be perfect(Service Packs are big, and DNS along with word takes up a fair amount of space), but 20G should get you by just fine if you're only going to go with SP2 and skip SP3, and you don't think you'll be doing anything else with it besides Speech Recognition and Playing a few small games (like cards and the like).

For w2K, I found 20G of HD space and 512 MB of RAM to be more than adequate. Of course, I don't use this for Speech recognition and feel I probably went a little overkill on the specs for it. But good enough, at least I don't have to worry about needing to adjust it later on. Also, since w2K applies to the OP and VV, I would take a look at the minimum requirement for VV and adjust my RAM to higher if I needed to, but I doubt I'd go lower than 512MB

For w98, I believe I set up a whopping 10G of HD space and went extreme with 256 MB of RAM. Again, I don't use 98 for speech recognition because that's just crazy. But I do use if for all of those old legacy games that I still enjoy playing from time to time. Also, it's nice to load up for that nice 'retro' feel when I'm feeling nostalgic.

I would have gone with a copy of 95 too, but I'm beginning to think I might have actually thrown that one out since I can't find it. However, if I was going to set that one up. I'd probably only use 2G of HD space, and 32MB of RAM. After all, once you've got 98, who really needs 95 anyway?

And yes, in case you're wondering, I may have gone a smidgen overboard in the field of experimentation. But that's how I learn. It's also how I troubleshoot, and I'm not expecting anyone or everyone to pull out their old OS's of any flavour and load them all up.

Yes.

I believe the benefits speak for themselves. But here's what I found out from experience so far:

Pros:

1) I don't have to reboot to switch operating systems. Nor do I have to repartition my drive and wipe out or corrupt my existing OS to get things going. If I need to run a pre-Vista program (or in my case, even print a flipping document or use DNS), all I have to do is launch the Virtual environment, wait for it to load (usually pretty fast), and then go ahead and do my thing.

2) I can play legacy games and software that won't run on modern Operating systems, I can use any version of SR, all within the virtual environment, and I can continue to do other things on the host, like surf the net for research or run modern software (in my case, the host is Vista 64-bit, so limitations are even more unique).

3) I only need to run antivirus on the host, because I don't surf the net or download anything to my guest operating systems. It's easy enough to click and drag from one OS to another, or simply set up a shared folder structure.

4) I don't have to worry about having to do it all over again. After the initial setup, and once all the patches/fixes are applied to the OS, along with software that requires activation, I simply copy the Virtual partition onto an external hard drive and keep it there as a pristine backup to restore the one on my machine if anything goes wrong by either me or an act of nature.

5) it runs just like any other program would, shows up on the taskbar, can be switched between programs like any other program, and it can be maxized, mimized, closed with a snapshot that will open it exactly where you left off from the last time. If I really want the retro feel, I can maximize it to cover over Vista, making it feel like I'm in the real thing. Of course, it's nothing more than fool's gold, because I can easily minimize it down to remind me that I haven't really gone back in time. The other thing is that the resolution will automatically adjust to whatever size the window is set to.

6) It's risk-free. Like I already mentioned, you don't need to whipe out your existing Operating system to try it, only to find that it might not work. It's also designed to downplay your hardware for older OS's, making your chances of running them much higher than actually installing it on an actual partition.

cons:

1) It's not the real thing, even though it is the real OS, and you can't use any killer video driver's to run extreme games (not that it really applies to me, but it's worth mentioning). The older OS's may prove to be more of a pain than a benefit to set up and run on the more modern machines, and there may be CPU timing issues, particularly for those that run 64-bit AMD chips. However, as long as you're not living in the vitual environment this shouldn't be too big of a problem, and there is also a knowledge base available at your disposal to help solve those issues - they're already documented.

2) There is occasional lag and strange graphical glitches that make simple and common tasks like double-clicking quirky at times.

3) It takes up Hard Drive space, and if you don't have the space to begin with, it's not always the most optimal choice. Of course this also applies to partitioning/dual-booting as well - the space and resources need to be there to begin with in both cases.

4) I wouldn't expect anything phenomenal without already having the maximum amount of RAM allowed for my current (Host) OS, not that I would expect anything phenomenal anyway, it's only an OS, but still...

5) As much as I try, I can't think of anything else to knock it down with at present, other than the fact that it's a nuissance to have to run more than one OS.